Black women and the politics of invisibility

THE MAKING OF South Africa is built on the backs of black women using exploitative, racist, patriarchal and capitalist systems.

These methods are institutionalised and black women are always at the receiving end of their violence. To be black and female in South Africa is to exist in the margins of society.

In this article, I show the extent to which institutionalised patriarchy, hyper-masculinity and whiteness is in South Africa by reflecting on how our country treated Mam Winnie Madikizela Mandela and her legacy.

The life of black women in South Africa is a battleground for utter invisibility and hyper-visibility. Black women are always watched, but they are never seen. Black women exist in both the extremes of invisibility or hyper-visibility and that comes from a history of whiteness and patriarchy dehumanising black women.

We see this in the life and legacy of Mama Winnie Madikizela Mandela.

Madikizela Mandela was constantly under surveillance from both the apartheid government and by black men in the liberation struggle. She was constantly under surveillance and this meant that when she entered spaces, there was anticipation from forces of patriarchy and whiteness that she will act in resistance and rebellion.

In 2018, black women continue to be put under surveillance by the same forces.

Being under surveillance and being forced into hyper-visibility is dehumanising because it is based on a perceived deviance and othering. This means that when black women are forced into hyper-visibility, there is a gaze that follows them.

For many black women, utter invisibility and hyper-visibility are used by whiteness, capitalism and patriarchy to keep black women “in their place”.

Like hyper-visibility, invisibility is violence and it thrives on stripping the subject of their power. When you are invisible, you are dehumanised.

However, the invisibility that is imposed on black women is more brutal because of the inherent racialised and gendered intersections of power. This means that invisibility for black women is not only systematic, but is deliberate.

This systematic, institutional and deliberate invisibility in the South African context is often imposed on black women for speaking and acting against what patriarchy and whiteness expects from black women. In most patriarchal and racist societies like South Africa, deliberate invisibility often follows hyper-visibility.

We saw how the hyper-visibility imposed on Madikizela Mandela’s life by the apartheid government painted a narrative about her and this resulted in her being forced into invisibility in post 1994 South Africa. Her imposed invisibility post 1994 was used as punishment for her defiance against capitalism, whiteness and patriarchy. This shows how deliberate invisibility for black women is used as punishment and that punishment is often positioned as excusable.

Black women’s lives are marked by everyday struggles of existing in the extremes of both visibility and invisibility. Black women cannot continue to be subjected to a white and patriarchal gaze.